


The best thing I ever stole

by Laurelwreath



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Coercion, Cunnilingus, F/M, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-19
Updated: 2013-03-19
Packaged: 2017-12-05 20:26:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/727579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laurelwreath/pseuds/Laurelwreath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short fic inspired by speculation I read on an ASOIAF forum, about where Tormund Giantsbane’s name really comes from.<br/>Turns out he was the one who stole Mors Umber's daughter (her name isn't mentioned in the series so I made one up) and this is her perspective on being kidnapped.</p><p>No depictions of violence, but mild coercion/questionable consent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The best thing I ever stole

She had woken to faint, strange sounds in the courtyard, but when she stepped out of her chamber to go and check on them, she was suddenly face-to-face with the ugliest man she’d ever seen. She let out a scream, but it was stifled by a hand clapped on her mouth.

“Get off, Garl, this one’s mine.” The speaker was a short but enormously broad-chested young man whose other hand held a sword, pointed right at her. She was swiftly dragged back into her chamber, the young man holding her head in a vise-like grip.

“No screaming or funny business, or you’re dead. Gold? Jewels? Point, I won’t let go of you.” Shaking with terror, she gestured to a chest which was duly emptied by the ugly man who threw in a couple of her best dresses for good measure.

“Let’s get going before someone else wakes up. Don’t make a sound, or I’ll cut your throat, no matter that you’re a pretty bird.” She was marched at swordpoint along the corridors and out of the postern gate. Her father’s guards must’ve had their throats cut already, as they encountered no-one on their way out, and she was far too afraid to scream. Raiders, here, at Last Hearth! She would never have imagined wildlings would be so insanely daring. They must notice, they must, she thought, when the raiders slipped out of the gate and over the walls, but in vain. This expedition must have been planned very carefully, as Lord Umber, his brothers and most of his men were away. She later heard that it was an inside job; a guardsman had thrown in his lot with the free folk.

The broad man took a moment to tie and blindfold her, and she was thrown on his horse like a sack.  They rode through the night, and when the day dawned, she was already being hoisted up the Wall along with the loot, trussed like a fowl. Only halfway up the immense ice cliff the terror of the situation fully registered in her brain. She had been robbed from her home by a band of terrifying savages. She kept hoping she’d see watchmen in the distance, or her uncle’s troops riding after the raiding party, but in vain. The hope took years and years to die. Every time she heard distant hoofbeats, for a moment she’d imagine that they were finally coming to rescue her.

“Lord Umber is my uncle and my father is his castellan” she kept repeating to her captors. “You’ll be hanged for this! The Watch will come after you! Let me go and I’ll tell them I wasn’t harmed.”

“Let you go so you’d tell them who we were and how we done it? No thank you. The North is big and the Watch is small, they won’t ever find us. No, you’ll come with me. I wasn’t meaning to get meself a wife, mind, but you’re a right pretty one, and a lady to boot. We’ll rub along just fine.” This was anything but reassuring, coming from the brute who had threatened her with the sword. When they had scaled the Wall and were riding into the wilderness, on horses cunningly kept in wait for them by a couple of men, she was allowed to sit in the saddle in front of him with only her hands tied.

“Me name’s Tormund, by the way. Tormund the Bearsbane, though might that I change it to Giantsbane, being that it was a giant I saw on your father’s banner, and I once fought a real giant too. What’s yours?” “I’m Lady Aerinn” she answered reluctantly. “Well, over here, you won’t be no lady, but I’ll treat you like one, I promise.”

When they set up camp for the night, she was sick with terror, imagining how this savage was going to rape her. Instead, he merely lay down next to her, even releasing the rope that tied her hands together.

“Promise me you won’t try to run away. There’s wolves in these woods, and bears too. You can’t find your way back to the Wall, not without having lived in these woods all your life, so unless you’d like to fall off your horse and break your neck or get lost and starve, you’d better stay with us.” She could hear howling uncomfortably close, and the horses were restless, so it didn’t take much to convince her. They’re coming to save me, she thought, I can survive until then. But they rode on and on through the wilderness, and when two days later, they arrived to a village on the bank of a little river, there was still no sign of a rescue party. This village was apparently the home of Tormund and his cronies. She was taken to a longhall which was one of the largest of the village and which she understood as belonging to him. She was still in her nightdress and a cloak she’d thrown over it, and at Tormund’s instructions a serving-woman brought her some garments and asked if she’d like to wash up a bit, she could fetch her some hot water? Tormund patted her bottom convivially. “I wouldn’t mind if you did. Might that I need to scrub meself up a bit too, to be more to a lady’s liking.” She blanched when she understood his meaning, but she was so dusty and sticky she could hardly refuse a bath.

Clean clothes and a chicken the serving-woman roasted over the open firepit did go some way towards making her feel less miserable. Tormund offered her a horn of strong, sweet mead, and nervously she took such a deep gulp of it that he took it off her hands.

“Careful now, it’s stronger than you think. Drink too much too fast and it’ll make you feel sick.” He was right, as the mead seemed to rise to her head right away, and for a moment it made her forget her awful situation and look around filled with curiosity. The house was such an odd sight, and so were the wildlings gathered around the fire. She’d never thought that people over the Wall were just that, people. A couple of women were making and serving food, men lounged on the benches talking and children played with each other. It seemed that these people were either servants or some lesser relatives of this Tormund, as he was served first and sat on a chair facing the doorway while the others crowded on long, low benches that extended towards the walls of the house and doubled as beds.

When the chicken was finished, Tormund got to his feet. “I think it’s time for me and this young lady to get to know each other a wee bit, and it would be a fine time for the rest of you to make yourselves useful somewhere else. Now go on, off with you.” The other wildlings filed out of the hall and she was left alone with the man.

“Come on, don’t be shy.” He took her hand and led her along to the end of the hall, where a wall separated a small room from the open space. It was a bedchamber, most of which was taken over to a built-in bed, with barely room for two people to stand beside it. The sight of the bed made Aerinn once again terrified. She’d been grateful when this Tormund left her alone during the ride, but now her luck had apparently run out, and she couldn’t face the thought of letting this savage touch her.

“Please… please, no…” She cowered in the corner, as far from the bed and this horrible man as she could. In so close quarters, he was even more overwhelming. He wasn’t much taller than her, but burly and muscle-bound, with a curly mop of reddish hair and a thick beard. Oddly, though, he wasn’t a bad-looking man apart from his fearsome size. He had open and regular features and a cheeky grin that made his big, blue eyes twinkle.

“Oh, come now, lassie, I mean no harm to you. Just come on over here, to my side, and I promise I won’t lay a hand on you. We’ll just have a word with each other, all nice and quiet-like.” She was sure that this word would, in fact, involve quite a number of unwelcome advances, but she didn’t really have a choice. She hadn’t forgotten how this man had threatened her with a sword, so she climbed to the bed beside him and lay down, rigid like a plank with terror. Tormund took her braid in his fingers. “What pretty hair you have, so dark, like your eyes. Do you have sisters? I bet they are beauties too.”

He quizzed her about her family and life at Last Hearth, and somehow he managed to put her a little bit at ease. “Did you have some young man who’d set his eyes on you? I’m sure you did, a beauty like you.” She told him of her betrothed, Keiran Glover, adding that he was surely already on her trail. Then it struck her that even if she’d be rescued, would Keiran still want to marry her? Here she was, in bed with a wildling, and she knew that it was only some odd kindness in his character that prevented him from having his way with her. She’d be thought soiled, no matter what had really happened. Still, she’d rather live the rest of her life in her father’s castle than here surrounded by these savages.

Just as she’d guessed, Tormund’s hand had crept towards the lacing on her bodice. He pulled lightly on one of the laces, opening the knot that held them together. She met his gaze with a look of mute pleading.

“No? Well then, how about a little kiss? There’s no harm in that, I promise I won’t try anything more.”

He didn’t really wait for her answer, but at least he had the decency to start slowly. His lips brushed her cheek, the hairs of his beard making her skin tingle, and when she was too overwhelmed to turn away from him in time, he planted a kiss on her mouth. It wasn’t as horrible as she’d expected. His lips were softer than she’d imagined, and their touch was light.

“See, it wasn’t that that awful. How about another?” I don’t really have a choice, she thought, but he likes pretending that I have. As an experiment she turned her head away, expecting him to force himself on her, but he didn’t.

“Ah, it saddens me, it does, when a pretty lady doesn’t like me kisses.” He lay back on the cushions, sounding genuinely disappointed.

“Maybe a lady you hadn’t carried away at swordpoint would be more receptive” she couldn’t resist pointing out, and he let out a big bellowing laugh. “Ah, come now, I had no choice. I didn’t go all the way to your castle to get meself a wife. If I’d let you go, it would’ve spelled death to me and my friends. What if we’d agree that what is done is done, and kiss and make up?” She had to laugh despite herself. There was something almost endearing about this big, boisterous man who thought he could make her accept the most outlandish ideas if he’d just talk long enough.

“All right then, kiss me if you want it so much, but I won’t promise I’ll agree with you.” He seized the opportunity and kissed her again, and this time it wasn’t over half as quickly. She was surprised when it didn’t really feel at all unpleasant. She had only ever had a chaste kiss on the cheek in her betrothals, and sometimes she’d wondered what a real kiss would feel like.

“See, I thought you’d like it. Now how about you put your hands around me neck a bit, get nice and cosy?” She did, to her own surprise, and Tormund kissed her again until she was almost breathless.

She was determined to resist his advances, but somehow he persuaded, cajoled and sweet-talked her into giving up bit by bit. The first night, she slept curled up in the corner of the bed, as far from him as possible and her dress still on, but by the next night, she’d let him remove her dress and even sneak his hand under her shirt a bit. She had a feeling of watching herself from the outside, unable to prevent her body from responding to his deft touch. Only when his hand tried to worm its way between her thighs did she suddenly become terrified, remembering that she’d have a hard enough time convincing Keiran to marry her without having lost her maidenhood.

“I have quite an enormous member, you know. Ask anyone in the village, they’ll tell you that Tormund has the largest of ‘em. You sure you don’t want to try?” By the following night, her shirt had come off, after a great many entreaties to see just a little glimpse of her beautiful bosom. She couldn’t help being flattered when she did finally lift up the hem of her shirt and he stared at her breasts in open admiration. He, too, was naked from the waist up, affording her an impressive view of a muscled chest covered by a thicket of reddish hair. When she once again refused a trial of the aforementioned member, he pulled up her underskirt anyway and buried his face into her mound, his tongue lapping at her most private parts in a way that she’d never even imagined. The pleasure she took from it was frighteningly intense. She wriggled, she moaned and when he’d succeeded in making her whole body shudder with release, she wanted to die of shame. Finally, when Tormund, too, was fully undressed, the undeniably impressive member rubbing between her legs as they writhed on the bed, she caved in a moment of madness.

“Do it” she whispered in his ear “oh please, please…” He thrust it in her in one go, and by that point she was so ready that she barely felt any pain when this savage took her maidenhood.

She had resigned herself to the fact that her rescuers took a long time coming, if indeed they would ever arrive. But she kept her eyes and ears open, trying to learn as much about this village and the far north as she could and planning her escape. They had probably taken a detour when they came here in order to throw pursuers off their trail. The departing raiders rode off to another direction, taking along food for just a couple of days.

But while she dreamed of running away, she couldn’t refuse Tormund when he approached her at night, and quick as lightning, a baby was on its way. She cried and cried when she couldn’t deny the truth any more. How could she turn up on her father’s doorstep, big with the child of a wildling? Never mind that riding away in itself would soon become impossible.

Tormund saw her eyes, red from the crying, and solicitously asked her what was the matter? ”I’m with child” she managed to mutter before collapsing in another puddle of tears, and Tormund held her in his arms and let her cry her heart out on his shoulder. She was grateful that he didn’t try to soothe her with sweet words and entreat her to stop crying. In some wordless way, he seemed to respect that she was devastated by this news.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you…” he began when her tears had run their course. “Now with the baby coming and all, would you like it if we went down to the godswood, made ourselves man and wife in the eyes of the gods too? It is all the same to me, but it seems to be important for you womenfolk, so I’m fine with it.” She’d already noticed that the other women in his household were all servants, and that the people of the village didn’t treat her like a slave but as their equal. Even Tormund’s old mother and father, who seemed be the village chief, acted as if it was the most natural thing in the world that their son had brought home a lady and installed her as the mistress of his household. She shrugged. “I guess we should do it. “

So she stood by his side in a grove of weirwoods, clad in one of her dresses the raiders had stolen and with flowers wound through her hair. By then she knew there was no going back anymore. The Umbers kept to the old gods, and the gods would know if she broke the promise she gave under the weirwood. But the baby wasn’t to blame for its impending birth. She didn’t want it to be born out of the wedlock, even if it meant accepting that her life was now here. When they’d said their wows, Tormund lifted her in his arms and carried her through the cheering crowd to where a feast was laid out in the village square. “You’re the best thing I ever stole and no mistake” he whispered when they shared a horn of mead. “Well, if I had to be stolen by somebody, I’m glad it was you” she whispered back, leaning in to give him a kiss that made the guests whistle and hoot so wildly that Tormund was, for once, rendered speechless.


End file.
